The Hunting Trip
by DCWash
Summary: It’s peacetime. The Sheriff’s gone, and life is good, right? Well, maybe not if you’re a woman. I’ve been almost haunted by the idea that whatever Djaq and Marian are fighting for,it’s not to be village housewives. This is my attempt to address that.


**Title:** The Hunting Trip

**Author:** DCWash

**Characters**: Djaq and Marian, with gossip about Allan and Annie and discussions of Robin and Will

**Disclaimer:** All characters belong to BBC/Tiger Aspect

**Rating:** E for Everybody.

**Spoilers:** None, really.

**Length:** 3318 words

**Summary**: It's peacetime, about five years after Robin and Much returned from the Holy Land. The Sheriff's gone, and life is good, right? Well, maybe not so good if you're a woman.

I've been almost haunted by the idea that whatever Djaq and Marian are fighting for, it's not to be village housewives. This is my attempt to address that.

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This was not going well. At all. What was supposed to be thread was looking more like rope. Bumpy, gnarled rope. Every fool woman in this cold, God-forsaken land could work a basic spindle, so why couldn't she?

She dropped it again, making sure to get it started turning in the right direction this time, and pulled at the carded wool with her other hand in the way Winifred had showed her. Or at least, she thought it was the way Winifred had showed her, but she must have done something wrong, because the yarn broke. Again.

"_Aaaaaaaaggggh!"_ she yelled as she threw the whole mess at the door…barely missing Marian, who was—of course!—approaching at that very moment.

"Djaq!" Marian cried as she ducked and the spindle, trailing badly-twisted wool, knocked off the door jam. "It's me! It's me! You're not under attack!"

An embarrassed Djaq gathered up the yarn, brushed Marian off, and generally made an apologetic fuss. But even as she did so, she wondered why Marian was there. Featherstone was far enough away from Locksley that Marian and other old members of "The Gang" didn't just drop by because they were in the neighborhood—they had to aim for it if they wanted to visit.

The two women looked each other over, a bit awkwardly. They were friendly—they got along well enough, and had an enormous respect for each other—but weren't exactly _friends_. They simply hadn't spent enough time together, and what time they had shared had been in the midst of one crisis or another, where they could hardly put their heads together and share a good joke or gab. Djaq assumed Marian must be there for something medical, but even so, Matilda's cottage was probably closer, so it must not be urgent.

And then there was the way they were dressed, each looking a complete contrast to the way the other was used to. Marian was wearing what looked to be a pair of Robin's hemmed-up breeches. Djaq, on the other hand, was in a simple kerchief and the same shapeless woolen dress English countrywomen wore day in and day out. Marian guessed it was some kind of hand-me-down from a larger woman, judging from the way it fit. Djaq couldn't help but wonder where Marian's usual fine gowns were; Marian thought this was perhaps the only time she had seen Djaq in a skirt.

"But I suppose I should call you 'Safiya' now," Marian said with a little smile. It was her way of acknowledging the dress and the spindle and the kerchief. And that this new woman might not share the same interests as the old one.

Djaq gave a dismissive wave of her hand. "No. I thought that, at first, but it's easier to stay 'Djaq' now that I'm back here. Safiya…it doesn't feel right anymore. At least not with you lot. Would you…would you like…something to drink, Lady Marian?" She was looking around the room, trying to figure out how best to play the hostess in a place where she still felt a visitor herself.

"No thank you. And if you're still Djaq, then I'm not 'Lady' Marian. I'm just 'Marian.' At least to you and…you know…the _others_." Djaq was correct in interpreting that as meaning Marian saw herself an equal to the erstwhile outlaws now settling down in the neighborhood, though maybe it would behoove the Countess of Huntingdon to be thought of as "Lady" Marian to rest of the people of the manor.

"So. If you don't want a drink, then how can I help you?" Djaq didn't offer food. She had eaten enough of her own cooking to know better. She put on her professional, disinterested-physician face, the one that seemed to inspire trust because it made her appear confident in her own abilities at the same time it showed a distinct lack of judgementalism.

"Actually…." Marian seemed embarrassed enough that Djaq was now sure she was consulting on something medical, something she didn't feel comfortable admitting to Matilda. "I wanted to see if you'd like to go hunting."

Djaq blinked. And again. And again. This was the last thing she expected. Though it did explain the breeches.

"Hunting."

"Yes, hunting. I thought we could get some ducks. Or…something." Djaq didn't know as much about English wildlife as she wished, but she did know enough to doubt if raw early spring was the time to bag a brace of ducks. Weren't you supposed to do that in the autumn, after the nests had been built and the eggs hatched and the fledglings had all grown up?

"Hunting." Well, it beat trying to spin. "When?"

"Now?"

"Let's go!"

And that was that. Marian was surprised when Djaq stripped off right there in front of her to put on her own breeches—breeches she had to dig out of the bottom of a chest and which barely fit around the waist any more--but she supposed years in a Sherwood camp had reduced her sense of modesty. It had, but it was more a case of Djaq wanting to get out of that dark, smoky cottage as fast as she could. She grabbed a hunk of cheese and a couple of rolls and took her bow off the wall, where it served mostly as decoration lately. She was going to get a water bag but Marian had her own rather large flask of wine, which, as Djaq told herself, was safer anyway.

By the time they got to the forest, it was evident they weren't going to bag any ducks, or grouse, or any other game for that matter. It was, as Djaq had supposed (and as Marian knew full well) the wrong time of year. Besides, they were making so much noise that any small creatures were well out of their way. Marian's wine had put them in a chattery mood and had quelled Djaq's question of just why Marian had showed up to take _her_ hunting, anyway.

"Can you _believe_ it? A couple of months ago he's drunk in the gutter in Nottingham, and _now_ look at him!" They both found the rapid domestication of their friend Allan a Dale to be hilarious, at least at that moment, and were almost shrieking.

"…a house, a dog, a garden,

"…don't forget the pig!..."

"…never fear, one _cannot_ forget that pig!..."

"…he's sowing peas…"

"…_peas, _for God's sake!..."

"…and he's already got a wife—or as good as a wife--and a child, in _two months_!..."

"…you know, I think he secretly wants people to call him 'squire'…"

"…I think that must be some kind of record…"

"But…" Here Djaq paused and tried to make a more serious point. "That wife thing…"

"'As good as a wife,' I said. I know she's technically just a maid, but…well, you know how these things work." Marian assumed, as did most people, that Annie performed a few services for Allan that went beyond cooking and cleaning. It was a pretty common arrangement for an unmarried man and a poor woman to enter into, and as long as they were both agreeable to it and reasonably discreet, Marian didn't really care.

"But here's the thing: That's not really how those things work there, and I think Annie would like everybody to know that. That thing." Djaq had had a little more wine than Marian and he words weren't coming out quite as eloquently as she liked. "Seth was so proud, showing me around, and I saw Annie's and his things in the storeroom next to the kitchen, but nothing of Allan's. So I asked Allan point-blank how things were getting on with him and Annie. And he told me. Because he's, you know, _Allan_. Apparently she didn't even want to sleep in the same building as him to start out, but Allan said he'd be damned if he was going to sleep in the barn now that he finally had his own house, and if she was going to be that picky, she and Seth could sleep in the hayloft themselves."

"I bet that lasted only until it rained."

"Which was the next night. Allan felt so guilty he went out and got them.

So then Annie started looking around for a place where she and Seth could lodge, but…."

"But this isn't Nottingham! How far would she have to walk before dawn and after dusk between the nearest house and Allan's place, if she's cooking and brewing and doing all the rest of the housekeeping for him?"

"That's what Allan said. He thought the idea was lunacy. Anyway, they worked out this thing where she and Seth sleep in the storeroom and Allan sleeps next to the fire in the main room. He gets the warmth and they get the privacy. Personally, I think a good hayloft is more comfortable than a dirt floor in a cottage, but I'm not them.

At any rate, Allan said Annie is worried about her reputation, and wouldn't mind at all if word spread about their arrangement. So now I've done my duty. I've spread the word. To you."

Marian shook her head. Well, Robin had wanted Allan's tavern to be a respectable place….

They walked on a bit, neither saying they were surprised at how much they were enjoying the other's company, and neither saying how grateful they were to be out of doors again.

"So what about _your_ arrangement, Djaq? I thought you'd be married to Will by now." If wine made Djaq's words come out wrong, it made Marian ask personal questions.

"It's…okay. I guess." The hilarity of a minute ago was gone.

"Aren't you working for Matilda? That surprised me. I thought you knew all there was to know about medicine."

"I'm working _with_ Matilda. For now at least, it's kind of two branch offices of the same practice. Plus, I know things she doesn't know; she knows things I don't know. I've been teaching her about surgery and such. She's been teaching me delivering babies. And about the local plants. I learned a good bit in the forest, but it was all educated guesses and trial and error. The climate's so different here than where I learned medicine, the things that grow here aren't the same as the things that grow back home. I'm happy to have a tutorial." But Djaq didn't look happy.

Marian said, quietly, "It's not the same, is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Life. Compared to before, in the forest. We all thought it would be so good, and so easy, to settle down and be domestic. But it's not, is it?"

Djaq fairly exploded, in agreement and gratitude, not in anger. "_Allan_ can do it! If even _Allan_ can do it…."

"Allan gets to go out and visit whores in Nottingham whenever he wants, and take archery practice with the lads, and tell tall tales of his adventures to an audience at his tavern. We—you and me…can't."

"Which is why you wanted to go hunting."

"Oh, Djaq! I thought I was going to explode if I didn't get out and talk with somebody who knew…who understood. Or not even talk, just _be_ with somebody like that!"

"Robin's not like that?"

"Will's not?" Marian countered.

"Will….expects things." Usually when women phrased things like that, Marian assumed they were rather prudishly referring to sex, but she knew better with Djaq. And with Will, for that matter.

"I think I know what you mean. Robin just expected I would put down my sword and pick up my embroidery without missing a stitch. That I would simply _love_ to supervise the cheesemaking, or that my lifelong ambition was to keep count of the sheets. If he even thinks that much about it."

"You've a least got a whole manor to manage."

"Actually, that's Robin's job. Though he does consult me. That's better than a lot of wives get. And it was nice to be so normal for a little while. But, now…like I said, it's not the same."

"Will's never asked me if I want to live in Locksley. He's never even asked me to marry him. He just assumes I will."

"Won't you? You did come back here, after all. And you came back _after_ he did. I can't blame him for thinking he was the reason."

"It's…more complicated than that," Djaq said, slowly. She searched for the right words. "Before I came to England the first time—before I was shipped to England, rather—I was under my father's protection. And he protected me by letting me do the same things my brother did. So I learned medicine, and science, and languages, and I fought--and I ate it all up. I _lived!_ Even with all that death around me, I knew I was extremely lucky, because that I got to test myself every day, and every little thing I did mattered to the utmost—every decision was life-or-death, every choice was between honor and shame. And then I was here, where I did the same thing, but with even more freedom.

But when I went back to Acre, things had changed. Without my father, I couldn't live like that any more. I needed someone's _permission_." She fairly spat the word. "Everything had gotten a lot more conservative, maybe because the war had hit home and people were scared. Will never understood that. He never knew what it was like before, so he didn't understand what I had lost. Maybe that's why we bickered so much when he was there. And when he went back home to England, I didn't just lose my man, I lost my last chance for freedom. At least, that's what it felt like, which is kind of ironic. So I followed him. It was partly for his own sake, but more for…what he represented, maybe?" Her words were getting fuzzy again, the result, perhaps, of trying to speak what was in her heart in a language long down the list of the ones she had learned, and made the worse for the wine she had drunk.

Marian sympathized, she really did. But she had to ask the question. "What about poor Will?"

"Oh, I do love him! And I'll marry him, at least if he ever actually _asks me to_. And I'll live in Locksley and I'll deliver babies and I'll have my own babies and I'll be that foreigner the oldest Scarlet boy married and people never quite trust, because she's a Saracen, you know. And in the mean time, Will will fix up his house for us to move into, and build that house Robin's commissioned, and I'll live here with Winifred and work with Matilda and learn to spin and to sew like a good little village housewife."

"But is it at least better than it could be?"

"Better than life in Acre, as it is now? Even if Will were there? Yes. But…it's not the same."

That seemed to sum up both their lives, Marian thought. Less than they had been, in so many ways. Yet more than they could be. When she got like this, Marian forced herself to count her blessings. She was comfortable. She was beyond comfortable, in fact—what with joining the Knighton and the Locksley estates, and with the additional manors the king had granted Robin for his services, she was quite rich and lived a life of ease and luxury. She had a good man who she loved and whom she knew loved her, and was faithful, which placed her ahead of most of the noblewomen she knew. He treated her like an intelligent human being, which was better than many wives got, too, even when their husbands were loving. And he was here, at home--mostly—instead of spending their marriage fighting on another continent.

But counting her blessings wasn't lifting her mood this time. She started shooting arrows, steadily, purposely, and with a ferocity she hadn't shown since the Sheriff's death.

"At least you'll have your work. You're expected to be something more than a brood mare."

"What do you mean?" Djaq sidled behind Marian, for safety's sake.

"Your job is to heal people, and to deliver babies, isn't it? My job now is to _have_ babies."

"What? Don't you want children?"

"Yes. Of course. But what I want is to be happy if I have a baby, or be sad if I don't, just like everybody else. I don't want it to matter more than that. Instead, my whole reason for being now is to produce an heir, with backups for emergencies. A girl or two would be all right, too, since they can help us form alliances when they marry well, but it had better not be more than that. And the boys had better come first."

Now it was Djaq's turn to ask the hard question. "But why are you surprised? I thought…well, I thought rich girls grew up taking that for granted, here and everywhere."

"We do. And maybe if I hadn't been the Night Watchman or run off to the forest or any of that, I wouldn't even have thought about it. But I did, and now it rankles. Because I've seen and done so much more. I've been _valued_ as so much more."

"What does Robin think about all this? Surely he values you as more than that."

"He does value me as more than that. And I'm grateful. But what does he think about it? He _doesn't_ think about it, any more than I would have five years ago. He expects heirs, plain and simple. He doesn't say it quite that explicitly, but it's obvious when he talks about his family history and his plans for the future that he's not just talking about having a child to enjoy and be proud of, he's talking about building a legacy or even a dynasty. But he's not the one who might…" She faltered a bit here, and the arrow in her bow wavered."….might die in the process."

Djaq was silent. Her reflex was to reassure Marian that death was not an option, but she knew better. Her own mother had died that way, and, she had gathered, so had Marian's.

"And in the meantime, while you're learning to be a good little village housewife, I'll go with Robin when we're called to court, and to tournaments, and to family gatherings, and get looked over by the other women and try not to hear them murmur about 'why, she's not pregnant _yet_!'"

"But you've only been married a few months!"

"Djaq, you wouldn't believe these women! They stake bragging rights on how quickly they get pregnant. Maria, Baron Fitzgerald's wife, is quite smug about apparently getting up the spout on her wedding night, though there are whispers that it actually happened somewhat earlier."

And Djaq had thought reconciling herself to a life of spinning and cooking was going to be hard.

"Marian," she said quietly," Do you really think we can do this? Do you think we might be…I dunno…ruined for life or something? Maimed by our life in Sherwood Forest?"

Marian looked at her, fully and seriously. "Are you asking if we'll ever be as happy as we were then?"

Neither spoke. Both were afraid of the answer. They couldn't do anything but turn and head back the way they came.

They walked mostly in silence. As the cottage Djaq shared with Winifred came into view, though, Djaq said, quietly: "Marian, let's make a pact. If we can't do it, or if one of us has to get out, even temporarily.…"

"We—the two of us—will go hunting. Even if it's the wrong time of the year to get anything."

Djaq gave Marian a tight little smile. Yeah, that's the ticket—hunting trips in the forest. With a friend, not somebody you're just friendly with. No, it's not the same. But it'll have to do.


End file.
